political advertising

TVNewsCheck’s prescient editor, Harry Jessell, asks his infallible Magic 8-Ball to reveal how 2019 will unfold for various aspects of the television business, including core advertising, political advertising, retrans, mergers, FCC ownership caps, Big-4 duopolies and ATSC 3.0. He then expounds on the answers since, while all-knowing, the 8-Ball is notoriously terse.

Both networks said today they will stop airing President Donald Trump’s campaign advertisement that featured an immigrant convicted of murder. Earlier, CNN had rejected the same ad, declaring it racist.

A recent Facebook initiative aimed at combating foreign interference in elections involves requiring political-ad purchasers to identify themselves in “paid for by” disclaimers. But Facebook’s system suffers from some “significant apparent loopholes,” including one that allows ad purchasers to lie about their identities, Senate Democrats Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota) and Mark Warner (Virginia) say in a new letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

NBC is getting grief over its decision to air an election ad from President Trump that focuses on the migrant caravan in Mexico. The airing of the ad came around 10:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, about two hours into NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast in a game between the Green Bay Packers and the New England Patriots. It also comes a day after news surfaced that CNN had declined to air the spot, calling it “racist.”

Less than a week before the midterm elections, political TV advertising is setting records for both volume and negativity. Total political ad spending will reach $6.75 billion in 2018, research firm PQ Media predicts, with about half of that going to television.

Facebook is giving more details about who is spending the most money on political ads on its platform, and the leader this election cycle is … Facebook. Facebook calculated its political ad spending to be $12 million, for ads on the social network and Instagram. Those ads were, in general, related to getting out the vote and the latest changes to the platform to clean up political messaging. Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who is running for the Senate, is the top candidate spender.

As Hurricane Michael bore down Wednesday on the Panhandle with Category 4 winds, the Republican Party of Florida broke with tradition and continued to air two ads bashing Ron DeSantis’ Democratic rival in the race for governor, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, over his city’s response to a hurricane in 2016. And in the U.S. Senate race, the Democratic super PAC backing Sen. Bill Nelson (D) began running a negative commercial in strike-zone markets attacking his opponent Gov. Rick Scott. Also in those markets, a Republican super PAC supporting Scott is attacking Nelson in an ad for being “an empty suit.”